Archive for December, 2012

Edward Bernay is considered one of the greats in the field of public relations. Bernay assisted President Woodrow Wilson in a propaganda campaign to gain support of the allied aims during World War 1. He also designed PR campaigns for politicians and large corporations such as General Motors, Proctor & Gamble, and American Tobacco. He was one of the first to try manipulating the public through their subconscious. He was later named one of the top 100 most influential people of the 20th century in Life magazine.

Audience segmentation is when a large audience is broken down into smaller sub-audiences so that corporations can target these audiences much more specifically. A great example of this is billboards. When you’re driving down a highway, you see billboards for lots of businesses in towns along the freeway. It would make no sense for them to advertise a pub in England on a billboard in Oregon. They also use studies that show cultural tendencies in areas to speak to an audience. For example, there are many more billboards for beer in Wisconsin than most other states.

I think that one of the more interesting parts of this course was setting up the blog and posting on it. While there were quite a few complications along the way, it was fun to do and be able to see other people’s opinions and thoughts on various subjects. I also really enjoyed learning about the FCC and what can and cannot be shown on TV, radio, etc. It was very intersting to go through different scenarios and ask the class what they though was “ethical” or not, such as “Should someone be allowed to vote if they have no idea what is going on in the news?”. It makes for a cool discussion. What I didn’t find very interesting was the artifacts. I could already infer what most of them meant and (not to take anything away from the people who presented them, they did a great job doing it) it really wasn’t that interesting to me because of that.

We all have a right to know, that is the main goal of the Freedom of Information Act, that took effect in 1967 under President Johnson. This act was created so that people could not only gain access to government information but have the right to do so. This act also makes the government accountable for publishing various records to be made public. This allows us citizens to remain knowledgeable about our government and strengthens our involvement in it.

This article talks about how in Connecticut the state Freedom of Information Act requires public schools to send in the copies of they’re school districts superintendent contracts. They conducted a test to see how fast return results were and when a problem of timeliness in return appeared further questioning for the reasons of lateness were investigated. This information was then made readily available to the public.

I think you have to realize that people have the ability to obtain information on the internet. It is not the best idea to put out personal information, even the city where you live, in some cases, if it isn’t absolutely necessary. It is our responsibility to not be stupid with our information on the internet. I want to think that I have a right to not have my information given out to other groups without my permission, though. A lot of people have issues with Facebook and Google today because they use our information; likes, interests, friends, etc. to target specific ads towards us. Google looks at our search history and targets ads based on the sites we go on! I am a huge Rise Against fan (as I’ve stated before), and I literally see Rise Against ads from iTunes everywhere I go. Go onto YouTube and watch a video; There’s an ad trying to get me to buy their albums on the video. Many other sites do this too, and many consider it an invasion of privacy. I’m sure, somewhere in the depths of the unread abomination that is the Terms and Conditions, that we basically give them the right to use this information, but many people don’t get it. I just don’t want to see South Park’s take on the idea, and have a “Human CentiPad”….*Shutters*